Risk Quant to Investment Quant

[pinkninja]

I have a MFE (not top-tier schools) and I have been doing risk analytics for a big bank for 2+ years.

I am tired of CCAR, BASEL and other kinds of regulatory reporting, so even though I am proud of the models which I have built from scratch, I still want to change to something more related to the investment side, such as quantitative trading or portfolio management.

I have been told it's nearly impossible to do that:
1. My risk modeling experience is not helpful in quantitative investment management;
2. I don't have a PhD to get into hedge funds.
3. I can program very well in R/MATLAB/Python but I am not so good at C#/C++ so I cannot be a quant developer.

Has anyone done something like this before? What should I do or prepare to transfer myself from quant risk to quant investment?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

Top level MBA. If you repackage yourself as someone with quant skills & add a top brand there's a likelihood of having more doors opened atleast in PM.

I have a MFE (not top-tier schools) and I have been doing risk analytics for a big bank for 2+ years.

I am tired of CCAR, BASEL and other kinds of regulatory reporting, so even though I am proud of the models which I have built from scratch, I still want to change to something more related to the investment side, such as quantitative trading or portfolio management.

I have been told it's nearly impossible to do that:
1. My risk modeling experience is not helpful in quantitative investment management;
2. I don't have a PhD to get into hedge funds.
3. I can program very well in R/MATLAB/Python but I am not so good at C#/C++ so I cannot be a quant developer.

Has anyone done something like this before? What should I do or prepare to transfer myself from quant risk to quant investment?

Thanks in advance.

 

[vertigo]

it is like talking to somebody who is so clueless that you almost feel sorry for them.

• do not listen to philip, his advice is very stupid and there is a special place in hell for people who give the wrong advice to the young. if you are dumb enough (as dumb as philip, let's say) to do an MBA, you will lose practicality (continuous 2 year work) for a qualification that takes you even further away from quant investment.
• it is like saying, how do i lose weight? eat more chocolate. what a moron. so, let us continue with having permanently erased philip's advice into a black hole.
• well done for observing that risk is a dump. the best people in the quant industry do not work in risk: they view risk as the place for the slower antelopes who just cannot catchup. do not give up in trying to move away from risk and into investment. you're still young so there is no time limit yet, your theta is not going to kill you, just yet.
• you are young so you can still learn new skills, namely portfolio theory and basic quant investment models, such as CAPM and APT. is CAPM a joke? yes. will it help in a quant investment interview? maybe. also, learn the Kelly criterion and its uses in buying/selling assets. dont just say you know them, actually learn them. rigorously.
• because you work in risk, you will have access to the golden goose - market data, on Greeks, PnLs, Rates, etc... so here is what you can do: learn basic strategies (Risk Reversal, Strangle, Call Spread) and create toy models -> back-test them daily or weekly. code it up in R / MATLAB and it will be fairly automated. your boss, team, etc, do not have to know about it. learn about the behaviour of assets, these are very important in terms of investment. clients would expect the quants working in a fund to know these things. R has so many packages that you can create all kinds of strategies and analysis, not focused on risk but on strategy (i.e. i want a low vol high return diversified portfolio - so i pick two negatively correlated assets with high mean and low vol)
• if you believe that your skills in risk cannot transfer to quant investment, you are a moron. have more belief in yourself. many hedge funds create quant roles specially for R / Python / MATLAB (although less for MATLAB) as these softwares are fantastic for machine learning. there are many books that explain how to create basic investment strategies with R / Python / MATLAB. Rather than exposing your weakness in C++ (most front office quants are clueless about machine learning), highlight your strengths in R and utilise them.

the cut off for risk, i would say, at a maximum is 5 years. any more than 5 years and you have a nearly non existent chance of moving to front office or investment. use your time wisely. if you feel bored or de-motivated, just take a look at the BASEL document - that will fire you up.

fourth, nobody cares about a PhD, assuming you do well in the interview. PhD is just a qualification that gets you to the interview, nothing more.

 

[lmaonade]

it is like talking to somebody who is so clueless that you almost feel sorry for them.

• do not listen to philip, his advice is very stupid and there is a special place in hell for people who give the wrong advice to the young. if you are dumb enough (as dumb as philip, let's say) to do an MBA, you will lose practicality (continuous 2 year work) for a qualification that takes you even further away from quant investment.
• it is like saying, how do i lose weight? eat more chocolate. what a moron. so, let us continue with having permanently erased philip's advice into a black hole.
• well done for observing that risk is a dump. the best people in the quant industry do not work in risk: they view risk as the place for the slower antelopes who just cannot catchup. do not give up in trying to move away from risk and into investment. you're still young so there is no time limit yet, your theta is not going to kill you, just yet.
• you are young so you can still learn new skills, namely portfolio theory and basic quant investment models, such as CAPM and APT. is CAPM a joke? yes. will it help in a quant investment interview? maybe. also, learn the Kelly criterion and its uses in buying/selling assets. dont just say you know them, actually learn them. rigorously.
• because you work in risk, you will have access to the golden goose - market data, on Greeks, PnLs, Rates, etc... so here is what you can do: learn basic strategies (Risk Reversal, Strangle, Call Spread) and create toy models -> back-test them daily or weekly. code it up in R / MATLAB and it will be fairly automated. your boss, team, etc, do not have to know about it. learn about the behaviour of assets, these are very important in terms of investment. clients would expect the quants working in a fund to know these things. R has so many packages that you can create all kinds of strategies and analysis, not focused on risk but on strategy (i.e. i want a low vol high return diversified portfolio - so i pick two negatively correlated assets with high mean and low vol)
• if you believe that your skills in risk cannot transfer to quant investment, you are a moron. have more belief in yourself. many hedge funds create quant roles specially for R / Python / MATLAB (although less for MATLAB) as these softwares are fantastic for machine learning. there are many books that explain how to create basic investment strategies with R / Python / MATLAB. Rather than exposing your weakness in C++ (most front office quants are clueless about machine learning), highlight your strengths in R and utilise them.

the cut off for risk, i would say, at a maximum is 5 years. any more than 5 years and you have a nearly non existent chance of moving to front office or investment. use your time wisely. if you feel bored or de-motivated, just take a look at the BASEL document - that will fire you up.

fourth, nobody cares about a PhD, assuming you do well in the interview. PhD is just a qualification that gets you to the interview, nothing more.

Outstanding post, I hope you keep posting here, if anything just to offset the people giving terrible, harmful even, advice.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

Vertigo-
You are clueless and seem like a frog in a well. There are more people who get hired to Pimco, Citadel every year from Booth MBA than working their way up laterally but evidentally they have some prior exposure to the quant side or an Engineering background.

The OP is stuck in the slow lane of career partly due to his/her mistake of selecting a non target program and pretty much has hit the ceiling in terms of oppourtunities. As a MFE grad, I'm sure the person know enough about MPT and to suggest him to read CAPM/APT is naive and for what good.

Also, risk roles are very relative; buy side risk is quite diff than sell side and foolish to brush everything with same paint. A risk role at a mid sized fund with less than 50 employee has better pay/exposure than front office role at a bank.

There is a glut of people like OP in the market and to suggest him get better at programming or create models to further his chances is merely investing on hope as a strategy when the missing element is better connections to pitch his credentials.

it is like talking to somebody who is so clueless that you almost feel sorry for them.

• do not listen to philip, his advice is very stupid and there is a special place in hell for people who give the wrong advice to the young. if you are dumb enough (as dumb as philip, let's say) to do an MBA, you will lose practicality (continuous 2 year work) for a qualification that takes you even further away from quant investment.
• it is like saying, how do i lose weight? eat more chocolate. what a moron. so, let us continue with having permanently erased philip's advice into a black hole.
• well done for observing that risk is a dump. the best people in the quant industry do not work in risk: they view risk as the place for the slower antelopes who just cannot catchup. do not give up in trying to move away from risk and into investment. you're still young so there is no time limit yet, your theta is not going to kill you, just yet.
• you are young so you can still learn new skills, namely portfolio theory and basic quant investment models, such as CAPM and APT. is CAPM a joke? yes. will it help in a quant investment interview? maybe. also, learn the Kelly criterion and its uses in buying/selling assets. dont just say you know them, actually learn them. rigorously.
• because you work in risk, you will have access to the golden goose - market data, on Greeks, PnLs, Rates, etc... so here is what you can do: learn basic strategies (Risk Reversal, Strangle, Call Spread) and create toy models -> back-test them daily or weekly. code it up in R / MATLAB and it will be fairly automated. your boss, team, etc, do not have to know about it. learn about the behaviour of assets, these are very important in terms of investment. clients would expect the quants working in a fund to know these things. R has so many packages that you can create all kinds of strategies and analysis, not focused on risk but on strategy (i.e. i want a low vol high return diversified portfolio - so i pick two negatively correlated assets with high mean and low vol)
• if you believe that your skills in risk cannot transfer to quant investment, you are a moron. have more belief in yourself. many hedge funds create quant roles specially for R / Python / MATLAB (although less for MATLAB) as these softwares are fantastic for machine learning. there are many books that explain how to create basic investment strategies with R / Python / MATLAB. Rather than exposing your weakness in C++ (most front office quants are clueless about machine learning), highlight your strengths in R and utilise them.

the cut off for risk, i would say, at a maximum is 5 years. any more than 5 years and you have a nearly non existent chance of moving to front office or investment. use your time wisely. if you feel bored or de-motivated, just take a look at the BASEL document - that will fire you up.

fourth, nobody cares about a PhD, assuming you do well in the interview. PhD is just a qualification that gets you to the interview, nothing more.

 

[Quant physician]

it is like talking to somebody who is so clueless that you almost feel sorry for them.

• do not listen to philip, his advice is very stupid and there is a special place in hell for people who give the wrong advice to the young. if you are dumb enough (as dumb as philip, let's say) to do an MBA, you will lose practicality (continuous 2 year work) for a qualification that takes you even further away from quant investment.
• it is like saying, how do i lose weight? eat more chocolate. what a moron. so, let us continue with having permanently erased philip's advice into a black hole.
• well done for observing that risk is a dump. the best people in the quant industry do not work in risk: they view risk as the place for the slower antelopes who just cannot catchup. do not give up in trying to move away from risk and into investment. you're still young so there is no time limit yet, your theta is not going to kill you, just yet.
• you are young so you can still learn new skills, namely portfolio theory and basic quant investment models, such as CAPM and APT. is CAPM a joke? yes. will it help in a quant investment interview? maybe. also, learn the Kelly criterion and its uses in buying/selling assets. dont just say you know them, actually learn them. rigorously.
• because you work in risk, you will have access to the golden goose - market data, on Greeks, PnLs, Rates, etc... so here is what you can do: learn basic strategies (Risk Reversal, Strangle, Call Spread) and create toy models -> back-test them daily or weekly. code it up in R / MATLAB and it will be fairly automated. your boss, team, etc, do not have to know about it. learn about the behaviour of assets, these are very important in terms of investment. clients would expect the quants working in a fund to know these things. R has so many packages that you can create all kinds of strategies and analysis, not focused on risk but on strategy (i.e. i want a low vol high return diversified portfolio - so i pick two negatively correlated assets with high mean and low vol)
• if you believe that your skills in risk cannot transfer to quant investment, you are a moron. have more belief in yourself. many hedge funds create quant roles specially for R / Python / MATLAB (although less for MATLAB) as these softwares are fantastic for machine learning. there are many books that explain how to create basic investment strategies with R / Python / MATLAB. Rather than exposing your weakness in C++ (most front office quants are clueless about machine learning), highlight your strengths in R and utilise them.

the cut off for risk, i would say, at a maximum is 5 years. any more than 5 years and you have a nearly non existent chance of moving to front office or investment. use your time wisely. if you feel bored or de-motivated, just take a look at the BASEL document - that will fire you up.

fourth, nobody cares about a PhD, assuming you do well in the interview. PhD is just a qualification that gets you to the interview, nothing more.

Hahahhahahhhaha,

So typical from Vertigo ( with an inner ear pathology, no wonder he talks a lot and does less)

Hell , OP could be a better than you in every aspect yet without the right connections/networking in such tough market, no other skill building would suffice.

 

[vertigo]

Vertigo-
You are clueless and seem like a frog in a well. There are more people who get hired to Pimco, Citadel every year from Booth MBA than working their way up laterally but evidentally they have some prior exposure to the quant side or an Engineering background.

The OP is stuck in the slow lane of career partly due to his/her mistake of selecting a non target program and pretty much has hit the ceiling in terms of oppourtunities. As a MFE grad, I'm sure the person know enough about MPT and to suggest him to read CAPM/APT is naive and for what good.

Also, risk roles are very relative; buy side risk is quite diff than sell side and foolish to brush everything with same paint. A risk role at a mid sized fund with less than 50 employee has better pay/exposure than front office role at a bank.

There is a glut of people like OP in the market and to suggest him get better at programming or create models to further his chances is merely investing on hope as a strategy when the missing element is better connections to pitch his credentials.

i try to be nice but sometimes you meet a person who is A. very stupid or B. pure evil . those who are stupid do not know any better. you seem to be the evil type - you persist in providing stupid advice that is harmful and maybe you get a kick out of it. for people like yourself, crucification in hell is a deserved reward. even that is a complement because i think you are also lying.

notice that nobody liked your post, because nobody agrees with you. you are now forced to backtrack to defend a stupid statement. your advice was a one sentence reply, unhelpful in nature. i wrote a paragraph, helpful in nature providing many options that the young guy can work on ASAP. MBA is not an ASAP solution. there are so many wrong, stupid and frankly rude assertions in your advice that it is hard to know when to begin and when to end.

• blaming the OP for making a 'mistake' to work in risk when this role is most likely OP OP's first or second major role in a bank, is incredibly naive. are you supposed to be the master of the universe when you are 20? no. its not helpful and is condescending. did your mother teach you how to be polite?
• you contradict yourself - you claim his opportunities are limited but then you claim there are opportunities to work in risk in the buy side. there is no clear structure or logic there.
• i have taught MFE to students. there is a clear divide from an MFE grad and a quant who has implemented pricing models, strategies, etc, using some form of MFE theory. it is not enough to just learn the material - you must apply it. to claim "the person know enough" because he studied MFE (credential) is naive, evil and very stupid. you wouldnt be taken seriously anywhere with that kind of thinking - which makes me think you are lying.
• my comments on risk are general; independent of buy/sell side. risk can be a good place to learn however you must transition to the front office. specifically, when you are involved in setting the 'actual' price of a derivative and understanding the use of that derivative (structured hedge, trading strategy, etc), only then can you really say you understand risk. working in risk, bizarrely enough, means you learn nothing about risk.
• you seem to believe that credentials are the way forward for him to transition to front office, which is funny because in my experience MBA's and PhD's are not taken seriously, if at all. credentials do not define the man, his ability does. getting more credentials does not mean getting more/better connections. if your advice is for him to get better connections, why would he leave his current company? it would be advantageous for him to develop better connections in his current company, not to leave.
• my advice can be implemented immediately, is difficult yet free. your advice takes a long time to implement (+2 years), is very difficult and extremely expensive. i need to say no more. nor is it advantageous - after getting an MBA you have forfeited most of your quant technical skills. only an evil, mendacious person would prefer your advice.

to attack me by stating that my advice is 'merely investing on hope' is bemusing, because i would strike back and say that your advice is banking on stupidity. at least by learning how actual asset prices move and knowing some basic strategies, be it options or portfolio, he will better prepared for interviews. getting an MBA won't do that.

Hahahhahahhhaha,

So typical from Vertigo ( with an inner ear pathology, no wonder he talks a lot and does less)

Hell , OP could be a better than you in every aspect yet without the right connections/networking in such tough market, no other skill building would suffice.

i dont know who you are, possibly another one of these weird individuals who possesses the PhD quant mutant strain virus. nevertheless, i agree that networking is very important. of course, networking is most helpful in getting you an interview, but if the interviewer finds out that you have an MBA but cannot explain CAPM, optimisation, characteristics of asset classes, etc, then it doesn't matter. you will be rejected. credentials help in getting you to the door - anything quantitative orientated that is higher than a Bachelors degree should be sufficient.

 

[bigbadwolf]

The OP is stuck in the slow lane of career partly due to his/her mistake of selecting a non target program and pretty much has hit the ceiling in terms of opportunities.

There is a glut of people like OP in the market and to suggest him get better at programming or create models to further his chances is merely investing on hope as a strategy when the missing element is better connections to pitch his credentials.

There is a glut of graduates from second- and third-tier schools. It's not necessarily something they went into with their eyes (completely) closed: maybe they couldn't get into a top-tier school and half-believed the siren song of the crud programs, promising a world of opportunity after they got their crud credential. Which didn't materialize in this vale of tears. The problem of course is the dearth of good jobs. I agree that just polishing coding skills and so on is unlikely to do the trick. But maybe that's all that can be done.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

By the time, the person improves his skills there will be a new stream of freshly minted MFEs from "top tier programs" flooding the market and vying for the diminshing limited oppourtunites unless his/her rate of improvement counteracts both these forces inorder to transition from risk reporting to front office.

Your assertion is stupid, if your advice can be implemeted quickly and cheaply it will be arbirtaged away soon however complex it may seem.

You might not have heard of Renaissance/DE Shaw/ Jane to claim that PhDs are not taken seriously. Buy side risk roles require a higher level of competence than sell side due to limited openings.

The MBA suggestion was to elevate the playing grounding and get better access to recruiting. I don't claim to know all the answers. The only advice for the OP would be to get competitive to break out of this rut but if he/she had that instinct wouldnt have chosen a second rate program in the first instance itself out of compulsion or ignorance.

i try to be nice but sometimes you meet a person who is A. very stupid or B. pure evil . those who are stupid do not know any better. you seem to be the evil type - you persist in providing stupid advice that is harmful and maybe you get a kick out of it. for people like yourself, crucification in hell is a deserved reward. even that is a complement because i think you are also lying.

notice that nobody liked your post, because nobody agrees with you. you are now forced to backtrack to defend a stupid statement. your advice was a one sentence reply, unhelpful in nature. i wrote a paragraph, helpful in nature providing many options that the young guy can work on ASAP. MBA is not an ASAP solution. there are so many wrong, stupid and frankly rude assertions in your advice that it is hard to know when to begin and when to end.

• blaming the OP for making a 'mistake' to work in risk when this role is most likely OP OP's first or second major role in a bank, is incredibly naive. are you supposed to be the master of the universe when you are 20? no. its not helpful and is condescending. did your mother teach you how to be polite?
• you contradict yourself - you claim his opportunities are limited but then you claim there are opportunities to work in risk in the buy side. there is no clear structure or logic there.
• i have taught MFE to students. there is a clear divide from an MFE grad and a quant who has implemented pricing models, strategies, etc, using some form of MFE theory. it is not enough to just learn the material - you must apply it. to claim "the person know enough" because he studied MFE (credential) is naive, evil and very stupid. you wouldnt be taken seriously anywhere with that kind of thinking - which makes me think you are lying.
• my comments on risk are general; independent of buy/sell side. risk can be a good place to learn however you must transition to the front office. specifically, when you are involved in setting the 'actual' price of a derivative and understanding the use of that derivative (structured hedge, trading strategy, etc), only then can you really say you understand risk. working in risk, bizarrely enough, means you learn nothing about risk.
• you seem to believe that credentials are the way forward for him to transition to front office, which is funny because in my experience MBA's and PhD's are not taken seriously, if at all. credentials do not define the man, his ability does. getting more credentials does not mean getting more/better connections. if your advice is for him to get better connections, why would he leave his current company? it would be advantageous for him to develop better connections in his current company, not to leave.
• my advice can be implemented immediately, is difficult yet free. your advice takes a long time to implement (+2 years), is very difficult and extremely expensive. i need to say no more. nor is it advantageous - after getting an MBA you have forfeited most of your quant technical skills. only an evil, mendacious person would prefer your advice.

to attack me by stating that my advice is 'merely investing on hope' is bemusing, because i would strike back and say that your advice is banking on stupidity. at least by learning how actual asset prices move and knowing some basic strategies, be it options or portfolio, he will better prepared for interviews. getting an MBA won't do that.



i dont know who you are, possibly another one of these weird individuals who possesses the PhD quant mutant strain virus. nevertheless, i agree that networking is very important. of course, networking is most helpful in getting you an interview, but if the interviewer finds out that you have an MBA but cannot explain CAPM, optimisation, characteristics of asset classes, etc, then it doesn't matter. you will be rejected. credentials help in getting you to the door - anything quantitative orientated that is higher than a Bachelors degree should be sufficient.

There is a glut of graduates from second- and third-tier schools. It's not necessarily something they went into with their eyes (completely) closed: maybe they couldn't get into a top-tier school and half-believed the siren song of the crud programs, promising a world of opportunity after they got their crud credential. Which didn't materialize in this vale of tears. The problem of course is the dearth of good jobs. I agree that just polishing coding skills and so on is unlikely to do the trick. But maybe that's all that can be done.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

Most of them are in denial and see it as a quickpath to the world of professional riches until the reality hits hard. Niether the predatory attiutde of academia helps where second rate programs have found an equally eager class of buyers and it all ends in utter disillusionment like the play of godot.

There is a glut of graduates from second- and third-tier schools. It's not necessarily something they went into with their eyes (completely) closed: maybe they couldn't get into a top-tier school and half-believed the siren song of the crud programs, promising a world of opportunity after they got their crud credential. Which didn't materialize in this vale of tears. The problem of course is the dearth of good jobs. I agree that just polishing coding skills and so on is unlikely to do the trick. But maybe that's all that can be done.

 

[pingu]

I have a MFE (not top-tier schools) and I have been doing risk analytics for a big bank for 2+ years.

I am tired of CCAR, BASEL and other kinds of regulatory reporting, so even though I am proud of the models which I have built from scratch, I still want to change to something more related to the investment side, such as quantitative trading or portfolio management.

I have been told it's nearly impossible to do that:
1. My risk modeling experience is not helpful in quantitative investment management;
2. I don't have a PhD to get into hedge funds.
3. I can program very well in R/MATLAB/Python but I am not so good at C#/C++ so I cannot be a quant developer.

Has anyone done something like this before? What should I do or prepare to transfer myself from quant risk to quant investment?

Thanks in advance.

Here is my contribution. You should concentrate on networking. You say you are in a big bank. Do you know anybody in the investment side in your company? Have you make an effort to meet anybody in those groups? They are not going to come to you.

You might be tired of whatever you are doing but it looks you haven't done s#!t about it so don't complain. It seems you already have the skills and knowledge but you haven't done much to persue what you want to do. Don't waste any more time on schooling though.

 

[MRoss]

There is no right answer. It's not even a matter of which fund or IB will pick you up; it is dependent on the attitude of the hiring manager. Also, guys this is a professional forum. Let's not name call and act like grade school children.

I have noticed while interviewing at 15+ HFs last year that risk quants very frequently move to the investing side while in IB not so much. Maybe get into a valuations or risk quant role in a fund and work your way to front office there?

Either way, I'm not a big fan of completely reinventing yourself. That is essentially saying "I have wasted years of my life" which is complete nonsense. You have been exposed to many models and likely have a good understand of trading data sets (PnL, Notionals, Quantity, etc). Never tell people you had to reinvent yourself; go more with the "I enjoyed my time in Risk and learned a lot but now I want to get into investing which interests me a great deal more because XYZ".

And NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK.

 

[seamusfinnegan]

Why do buy side risk jobs mean higher levels of competence? How is the work different to that of the sell side?

 

[GToul]

Why do buy side risk jobs mean higher levels of competence? How is the work different to that of the sell side?

Reason is two-fold and it's implied by the context. Firstly, on the exposure side, working for a small boutique fund assumes higher exposure (that can prove to be a double-edged sword though, if you are asked to get involved in other non-risk activities as well). Secondly and most importantly, what he means is that given the much fewer available buy-side risk jobs, at any given point in time, compared to sell-side risk jobs and assuming that supply is indifferent between the two (maybe even leaning more towards the buy-side roles) it gets more difficult to get into the former. The more difficult it gets, the more competent (and lucky) the potential candidates need to be.

 

[seamusfinnegan]

How can you be good at a risk job, it seems pretty trivial to me. What am I missing?

 

[Giridhar]

it is like talking to somebody who is so clueless that you almost feel sorry for them.

• do not listen to philip, his advice is very stupid and there is a special place in hell for people who give the wrong advice to the young. if you are dumb enough (as dumb as philip, let's say) to do an MBA, you will lose practicality (continuous 2 year work) for a qualification that takes you even further away from quant investment.
• it is like saying, how do i lose weight? eat more chocolate. what a moron. so, let us continue with having permanently erased philip's advice into a black hole.
• well done for observing that risk is a dump. the best people in the quant industry do not work in risk: they view risk as the place for the slower antelopes who just cannot catchup. do not give up in trying to move away from risk and into investment. you're still young so there is no time limit yet, your theta is not going to kill you, just yet.
• you are young so you can still learn new skills, namely portfolio theory and basic quant investment models, such as CAPM and APT. is CAPM a joke? yes. will it help in a quant investment interview? maybe. also, learn the Kelly criterion and its uses in buying/selling assets. dont just say you know them, actually learn them. rigorously.
• because you work in risk, you will have access to the golden goose - market data, on Greeks, PnLs, Rates, etc... so here is what you can do: learn basic strategies (Risk Reversal, Strangle, Call Spread) and create toy models -> back-test them daily or weekly. code it up in R / MATLAB and it will be fairly automated. your boss, team, etc, do not have to know about it. learn about the behaviour of assets, these are very important in terms of investment. clients would expect the quants working in a fund to know these things. R has so many packages that you can create all kinds of strategies and analysis, not focused on risk but on strategy (i.e. i want a low vol high return diversified portfolio - so i pick two negatively correlated assets with high mean and low vol)
• if you believe that your skills in risk cannot transfer to quant investment, you are a moron. have more belief in yourself. many hedge funds create quant roles specially for R / Python / MATLAB (although less for MATLAB) as these softwares are fantastic for machine learning. there are many books that explain how to create basic investment strategies with R / Python / MATLAB. Rather than exposing your weakness in C++ (most front office quants are clueless about machine learning), highlight your strengths in R and utilise them.

the cut off for risk, i would say, at a maximum is 5 years. any more than 5 years and you have a nearly non existent chance of moving to front office or investment. use your time wisely. if you feel bored or de-motivated, just take a look at the BASEL document - that will fire you up.

fourth, nobody cares about a PhD, assuming you do well in the interview. PhD is just a qualification that gets you to the interview, nothing more.

Hi Vertigo,
Thanks a lot for your answer.

I am in the same position but with much more vintage in Market Risk (~15 years).
I figured I'm not meant to be on calls talking about macro stuff like Risk Frameworks and deliberating on language and other graphics on various PowerPoint decks. I'm trying to pivot from a Market Risk career to a Quant Dev (later on Strats) career at 40 and am pursuing credentials that (I hope) will get me to the interview table for such roles.
I have recently completed a Diploma from NYU SPS for C/C++ Programming. Looking to pick up KDB+ as it is actively used by the Tech folks who I have to rely on for data at work.

Accepting a junior quant role won't cover my family's bills so I am trying to position myself to recruiters as someone who knows the fundamentals of Traded Risk and Greeks and PnL etc. and can also code, as compared to someone who can only code and doesn't know the business. So basically I am trying to laterally move into a Quant Dev role at the same paycheck level.

Would you call my attempt futile?

 

[azsrz]

Hi Vertigo,
Thanks a lot for your answer.

I am in the same position but with much more vintage in Market Risk (~15 years).
I figured I'm not meant to be on calls talking about macro stuff like Risk Frameworks and deliberating on language and other graphics on various PowerPoint decks. I'm trying to pivot from a Market Risk career to a Quant Dev (later on Strats) career at 40 and am pursuing credentials that (I hope) will get me to the interview table for such roles.
I have recently completed a Diploma from NYU SPS for C/C++ Programming. Looking to pick up KDB+ as it is actively used by the Tech folks who I have to rely on for data at work.

Accepting a junior quant role won't cover my family's bills so I am trying to position myself to recruiters as someone who knows the fundamentals of Traded Risk and Greeks and PnL etc. and can also code, as compared to someone who can only code and doesn't know the business. So basically I am trying to laterally move into a Quant Dev role at the same paycheck level.

Would you call my attempt futile?

Good to have a plan. I've been at credit risk for ~4 years and am tired of every bit of it. I am already good at python, c++ is rusted though. But my position is not market related. I am thinking to go to market risk (LOL) and jump again from there... or even leetcode and go to tech for a few years..